Without getting off the floor, I reach around on my bed for my cell phone, mashing my hand into the sticky ice cream before landing on its plastic case. I click it on and find a photo of Even, a close-up of the two of us at the beach. I stare at it and force myself not to cry, because the tears would blur my vision. Then, once again, I fall asleep.

  Chapter Twenty

  I whisper, “Rabbit, rabbit.” I wish with everything I have that Even will appear in the bed beside me, just as he was on the first of last month. At school, I may as well be a zombie. I plow through crowds commenting about my puffy eyes, bloated face, overall unacceptability, and, of course, Even.

  It’s no secret that Even and I were friends, ate together at lunch, showed up together at school, and then walked home afterward. His attractiveness didn’t stem the bullying when he was alive; apparently, being friends with someone like him didn’t move me up the ranks of popularity. Nothing changed now that he’s gone. Hillary is abysmal when she hugs Allie in the hall; her shoulders shuddering in time with her dramatic tears. The look she gives me reminds me of daggers, but my glare is worse. Hot knives. I’m still shoved in the lunch line and hear someone whisper that I’m going to take over as lunch lady when Mrs. Nichols retires.

  There have been a few gestures of condolence: a math nerd from the AV club pats me on the shoulder, several familiar faces offer smiles when passing in the hall. In the morning, Mr. Hammons asks me to stay after final homeroom to talk. It’s what I expect; he’s sorry for my loss and asks if I’m OK. I just nod and shrug. He’s probably concerned that I haven’t said a single word since the principal’s announcement. I’ve taken him up on the moment of silence he’d requested, the one I interrupted.

  When I get outside, I pause to wait for Even by the brick wall, out of habit, but then realize he won’t be meeting me. Twin tears form in my eyes and drop, one and then the other, down my cheek. Reluctantly, I walk home, taking my time. I should have driven, but I’m not ready to let go of the ritual that still connects me to Even. I’m desperate for him to materialize.

  As I cross over to my street, grimy slush sprays me. I blink grit out of my eyes. My skin prickles with cold. When I rub my face clear, the taillights of a black Corolla turn the next corner. Hillary and Allie have no reason to hate me that much. It was probably just an accident. If I weren’t standing there, it would have sprayed my neighbor Natty Gimbal’s forsythia bush.

  When I get home, I run a hot shower after bringing Mama her food and soda. As the warm running water soothes my frozen skin, I think about seeing Mama’s enormous body spread out on the bed, immobile and helpless, and it reminds me of my binge the night before. I think of how I tried to stuff down my feelings with food, and how I’ve been doing that most of my life. This time, my feelings won’t let me bury them. Even was too significant to be lost to candy and cakes.

  The slow drain causes water to pool around my ankles like the tears that will not relent. I cry as I get dressed. I cry as I plop into my bed. I cry as I beg my body to offer some relief, even if just sleep. But my heart is persistent. It won’t let me forget.

  Forget what? Even? That he was the only person in this town that was nice to me, including myself? That he offered me hope and allowed me to dream? That Even liked me, my smile, and accepted how I look. I can’t even offer that to myself. I’m ugly, worthless, and turn into a blubbering mess with endless tears.

  I hear the bullies at school and the bully in my own mind. It’s crowded in there, with loud voices vying for the cruelest insults, the bitterest truths, and how it’s obvious now that I didn’t deserve someone like Even. I listen to this assault for hours as the sun sets, my homework goes undone, and Skunk and Mama argue. My name accompanies the words “stupid” and “piece of shit.” Mama calls me. Skunk slams around. The loss and the nastiness that play through my mind paralyze me. I don’t respond or move.

  The principal announces a memorial service for Even the following week. All day, it’s as if I am carrying all however-many-hundreds of pounds of myself in my own arms. When I zip up my backpack at my locker, Ms. Barrows snares me in the hall and asks me to follow her to her office.

  I take her invitation to sit down in a pleather chair opposite her desk. A kitten hangs on to a bar on a poster behind her with the message “Hang in there.” I’ve been hanging in there my whole life, and just when someone came along who made it so I was doing more than just hanging in there, he’s gone. I’d rather do whatever comes when you stop hanging in there and let go.

  I don’t say this to Ms. Barrows; she’d probably have me committed.

  “I know this must be hard for you, Mercy,” she says. “Loss is never easy.”

  I wonder if she knows this firsthand or if she’s memorized one of the pamphlets on her wall.

  Then she asks, “How are you feeling?”

  Something about this question erases the snide comments I’d been preparing. I open my mouth to answer, but there isn’t one. How am I? I swallow. I want there to be an answer. Her face looks soft and her lips are certainly not wearing a smile, but they’re not not smiling either.

  “I know some of the kids call you Sugar. Do you like to be called Sugar? Or would you prefer Mercy?”

  My mouth parts, but still no sound comes out. She doesn’t look impatient or like she has something better to do. Like her face and lips, her eyes are soft as if she’s inviting my response. I think about how I got the name and about how much sugar I’ve eaten in my life. I think about how Even pronounced Sugar, like the g twirled a baton or dazzled with sparklers, and how he’d sometimes call me Shoog. I don’t want the name Sugar, because of some associations, but I do want it because that’s the girl Even knew.

  “Is Sugar OK?”

  Back to that question. Or does she mean is it OK to call me Sugar? I’m confused. I feel like a child and not because she’s condescending, not at all, but almost like I’m at the beginning again, like I’ve been broken down to all of my basic parts and am figuring out how they go together. She continues to look at me openly, warmly.

  “I know how to swim, but I feel like I’m drowning,” I finally manage to say. A wash of relief comes over me when she rises to her feet, walks over to my chair, takes me by the hands, and holds me in her arms. I begin to sob into her wavy red hair. Her hug is warm and soft—yet firm—like nothing, not even a seismic shift in the earth, could move her. Like Even.

  “I will be your life raft for as long as you need me to be,” she says, but in my head, I hear Even’s voice. We return to our chairs. The lights of the main office outside hers flick off. “I’ve got all night. If you’d like, you can start at the beginning.”

  I’m not sure if her offer is within the job description of high school guidance counselor, but I take her up on it. I tell her about my family and the bullying, but leave out a few key parts, not wanting to get anyone in trouble. She asks about my father, but there’s nothing to say. I tell her about how I eat and then about Even, and how he was like a ray of sunshine or just a really good dream.

  She listens all the while, asking questions here and there.

  When my voice gets hoarse, she asks me, “Will you come back tomorrow, after school?”

  I nod. As I walk home in the frigid darkness, I feel about one hundred pounds lighter, until I walk into my house.

  Mama’s voice crushes me as she shouts my name and coughs at the same time. I want to pretend I don’t hear. I discover she’s messed herself and is starving. I do my duties, give her cough medicine, and then disappear into my room. I cry myself to sleep.

  The following day, I resume the confessional with Ms. Barrows. It’s as if, overnight, she set several missing pieces of my puzzle into place. She asks me about Mama, and I mostly tell the truth. She asks me about the bullying, and I name names. She asks me about my diet, and I tell about the sweets, the binges, and about how the calm they used to bring has vanished.

  It’s dark when I leave again. As I walk home, I’m suddenly worried I said too much, like I betrayed Mama and ratted out the kids at school. Something heavy sits in my stomach . . . guilt or maybe betrayal.

  I creep into Mama’s room. The TV is on, but she’s snoring. She rustles when I near the bed, but she’s groggy from the cough medicine she’s finally taking. “John, John?” she says, her voice a rasp.

  “No Mama, it’s me.”

  “John,” she repeats.

  Or maybe she said Juan. I’m not sure. I press my hand to her forehead, but she doesn’t have a fever. She must be dreaming.

  “I didn’t mean for everything to fall apart—” As usual, a cough interrupts her. “Can’t put it back—together.”

  I quietly get her a glass of water from the bathroom, leave it on her night table, and turn off the TV.

  The next day, which almost feels like one long night, I feel like I have a target on my back. I’m afraid that, at any moment, someone might come up to me and thank me for getting them into trouble with a big punch to the face.

  I return to Ms. Barrows’s office a third day. The last, I promise myself with building anxiety. As before, she invites me in with a warm smile.

  “Sugar, I’ve been thinking a lot about you over the past couple days,” she tells me. “I feel honored that you shared so much of your personal life with me. I got the sense that you really needed to unload it all, but I think speaking to someone else might be more effective. You see, I’m just a high school counselor, and I get ambitious about helping you and everyone else here at JRHS, but I think you have more to say and perhaps more to hear. I have someone in mind if you’d be willing to see her. Her name is Juliana Collins. She’s in Keene. I’ve spoken to her, and she’d love to meet you.”

  I’m a combination of betrayal and confusion. “A shrink? But I thought you could help me?”

  “Haven’t I?” I want to be mad at her, but I can tell she doesn’t mean this in a patronizing way.

  I want her to be the one. I want to find a reason to dislike her, to replace the disappointment I now feel.

  “Please go see her, Sugar,” she says. “I’m certain she can help you.”

  I’ve never thought about myself as a person who needs help. I do the helping. Ms. Barrows repeats this back to me almost verbatim. I take a card with “Juliana Collins” written in embossed script across the middle with contact information beneath.

  “Can you promise me you’ll call her?”

  I think about the target I had on my back all day. I’m afraid.

  With trepidation, I leave her office while it’s still daylight. When I get back to my house, I turn the card over and over in my hand. I think about how good it felt to tell Ms. Barrows everything. What she said about how I have more to say and hear echoes enticingly. I memorized the phone number and the email on the card.

  I leave the house and drive to the library. I have an email account, but usually access it from my phone since we don’t have a computer at home, and I hardly ever use it because typing a long message on my phone is daunting. Who’d I write anyway?

  I log on and type Juliana Collins’s email into the address bar. I enter, “Recommendation from Ms. Barrows at JRHS” as the subject line. I proceed to write an impossibly long email, repeating everything I told Ms. Barrows. I finish with “She said I need help” and my name. I log off, meeting the same feeling of lightness followed by fear as I did earlier. Am I supposed to be telling anyone this? I imagine consequences involving humiliation and bruises.

  Mama used to say, “Don’t air your dirty laundry in public,” but then our dryer broke. But the laundry was washed, clean, the voice in my head counters. Right, but if it is out to air, it was dirty before; everyone knows that. I argue with myself all the way home.

  The following day at school, the entire student body gathers for an assembly. I assume it has something to do with Even. I tremble, fighting back tears. I take a seat on the end of a row in case I need to make a quick escape. My hips spread off the hard folding chair and overflow into the space by my neighbor. Not now. I don’t need the body-hate now.

  The principal steps up to the podium and tests the microphone. He reads the school’s policy about bullying and then turns on a video meant to discourage it. When it’s over, to my horror, Ms. Barrows stands at the podium. I pray she doesn’t bring attention to me or mention anything I told her. I’m frozen. I don’t blink or swallow. I’m not even sure I’m breathing.

  She announces that it’s anti-bullying week across America and then launches into an inspiring speech about how when she was younger she wore glasses, had braces, and her red hair made her stick out like a sore thumb. She goes on to explain how she was different, picked on, and what it felt like. She’s younger and more stylish than most of the teachers in attendance and therefore probably more attractive and therefore acceptable in the eyes of the target audience for this presentation. A peculiar thought skates into my mind and then just as quickly leaves. Maybe she likes herself the way she is. Imagine that.

  I listen to her story and, in places, it mimics my own. She catches my eye. Again, I hope no one notices. She implores us to stick together, to make this a safe community, and reminds us that bullying won’t be tolerated at JRHS. There’s polite applause.

  I duck out of the auditorium while trying to think of where I might hide. I decide to leave, so I go to my locker. I’m thankful there wasn’t a stampede, but I fear they’ll all know I’d tattled, just like they did when in third grade I knew who broke the classroom computer and told the teacher after she’d threatened to take away pajama day, which was sure to be chock-full of delicious sweet treats.

  Ms. Barrows catches me in the hall on my way out the front door. She asks if I’ve contacted Juliana. I look down at my shoes with a feeling of shame brought on by letting her see right through me to my weakest spots, revealing that I do need help—prompting her to lead an anti-bullying assembly and recommending me to a shrink.

  “Sugar? Did you make the call?”

  “I sent an email.”

  “Wonderful. Would you like to come into my office?”

  I shake my head. I watch her shoulders lifting with each breath. I can’t meet her eyes.

  “If you change your mind, I’ll be in there for the next couple hours.” She turns and her heels echo as she clicks down the hall.

  I breeze out the front doors of the school. I plant myself on the wall, as if Even will come. Then the reminder that it isn’t the end of the day and Even isn’t coming, now or ever, storms into my mind like the gathering clouds overhead.

  I plod through the slushy streets back to my house, but before I enter, I turn back and bring myself to the church. It isn’t Sunday, but I pause on the stone steps, unable to go farther. I turn my back and gaze at the sky, the color of sour milk. I clasp my hands before sinking to my knees. I shout, “Why?” Tears spill. “Why?” I moan.

  I sob until I can’t see clearly. I close my eyes, asking God why he took Even away. Why dim the sun? Why ruin everything? Why the cruelty? In my mind I scream and tantrum and beg, gripping my hands together until they’re red and cold. I collapse, unable to hold myself up. I’m tight with anger but can’t bring myself to leave. I stay there until my tears freeze on my face.

  Back in my room, I thaw and continue to let the tears fall. I repeat this for the rest of the week: school, tears, and more school. Almost as notable as Even’s absence is the lack of laughter, comments, and jokes at my expense over the next couple of days. Maybe Ms. Barrows’s assembly worked.

  That night, when I bring Mama her dinner, I see a news report on TV about how a girl in Alabama took her own life because she’d been harassed about her speech impediment. I’ve never really thought about that, except maybe in the cool water of the river last summer, hoping for a snakebite, but that was more like escape, not death. No, that’s not my fate.

  As the chirpy newscaster tries to sound somber and Mama huffs over her with comments and intermittent coughing, I know what Even would have wanted from me. Without a word, I walk up to my room, lost in thought, hardly noticing Skunk and a couple of friends in the living room devouring chicken wings.

  Even wanted me to travel cross-country with him. He wanted me to laugh, smile, and live brightly. Then, in another fit of tears, I dissolve.

  I scrape myself out of bed for the memorial service the following day. Bleary-eyed, I tear through my clothes, finding plenty of black, but nothing worthy of this particular occasion. Maybe the idea came to me in a dream or maybe my consciousness has fractured, but I don’t want to wear typical mourning clothes. I imagine myself in something bold and beautiful, maybe involving chrome. I can’t even summon a laugh at my ludicrousness and throw my closet door open. Hanging there are a dozen hand-sewn dresses, even a floor-length gown. I settle on a dress with lace along the arms and chest, sewn into a fitted bodice and flared skirt. The color is between pink and coral: the sky at dawn.

  I shower and brush my hair, suddenly sodden with grief. The dress remains on the hanger. The only color for the way I feel is the darkest, most starless, and deepest of nights.

  Almost the entire upper class turns up, as well as teachers; a bunch of mechanics, as evidenced by the line of grease under their nails; and, of course, Even’s father and family. Father Caplin offers a eulogy and the principal says a few words. When he’s done, the priest asks if anyone would like to say something. Utter silence.

  Through a veil of tears that I don’t try to resist, I approach the microphone. As I turn to face the group, I wish myself invisible. I spot Allie and Hillary, Will and Nash. I clear my throat. I didn’t plan what I’m going to say.

  “I may not have known Even as long as some of you, but he knew me better than any of you. I feel a hole in my life and in my heart. He was the kindest person I’ve ever known. He acted like a mirror, showing me the best parts of myself, things I didn’t see and I’m sure you don’t either. He was unmatched in his generosity with words and gestures. I can’t imagine life without him. I don’t want to—” I pause, on the verge of a breakdown, but will myself to continue. “But he would want me to. So right now, I call upon the very first day Even and I met, and every day thereafter, and welcome him fully into my heart, a place for him to rest peacefully, and I hope for you to do the same.” My voice cracks and tears fall, but I call out, “I miss you, Even.”